Next Man Up (Making the Score Football Romance Book 2)

by Tawdra Kandle

  “But you don’t.” Her tone was faintly mocking.

  “I don’t need to lie to you to get you into bed, do I? Because here we are.” Loosening my hold on her hair, I spread my fingers and lay them against her warm cheek. “And I haven’t lied to you, Zelda. I never have. I never will.”

  She didn’t answer, but I saw the rise and fall of her chest as her breath quickened.

  “I know you, Zel. I can tell when you’re shutting down, when you’re putting up walls and when you’re building monsters. You get this little furrow right here—” I touched the top of her nose, between her eyebrows. “And I know that means you’re thinking too much. Over-thinking. Trying to figure out your exit strategy, before you get in too deep or care too much. But I got news for you, sweetness. It’s already too late. You’re in this with me, whether or not you want to admit it.”

  Now she did scoot away, pushing my hand away from her face. “Since when did you get to be an expert in psychology?”

  “I’m not.” Before she could get too far, I snagged her hand, twining our fingers. “I’m just well-versed in all things Zelda Porter.”

  Her response was a laugh that didn’t contain any humor. “Sorry to hear that. There’s not much future in that field of study.”

  “I beg to differ.” Lifting our joined hands to my lips, I brushed kisses over her knuckles. “When I look at you, Zel, all I see is the future. So much fucking potential, if only you’d give me—give us—half a chance.”

  She blinked, and I sensed that she was wavering. I knew, deep down, that Zelda cared for me. I could see it on her face in moments when she was less guarded, and I felt it in the way she treated me, how she touched me. We were friends, and there wasn’t any doubt about that. I’d been okay with that so far. But every day, it got tougher to settle for only that.

  This summer had been incredible in so many ways. Zelda and Gia had moved into their apartment, and since Gia was gone so often—hanging with Matt at his grandparents’ house, which they usually had to themselves, or at the wild parties those two enjoyed—Zelda and I had privacy like we’d never known before. We didn’t have to sneak to each other’s rooms. We could spend time together when we weren’t in bed.

  And at the risk of being repetitive, the sex was only getting better.

  But the more time we had, the closer we grew, I only got greedier. I wanted more. I wanted to be able to be with Zelda out in the open, to call her my girlfriend—and fuck it all, I wanted to be sure that we were exclusive. I knew I was. And I was almost positive that despite her declarations to the contrary on the night we’d first had sex back in December, Zelda hadn’t slept with anyone but me. I just wanted us to both to commit to that.

  Now, holding her in my arms, I waited, willing her to reach for me but knowing that it had to be on her own timetable, in her own way. If I pushed too hard, she’d back away.

  Yeah, whether she liked it or not, I’d taken a crash course on the enigma that was Zelda Porter. I’d learned to read her moods and expressions. I could tell when she was prickly or relaxed or worried. That was no mean trick, considering how hard she worked to protect herself and her privacy.

  “What does that look like?” The wrinkle between her eyes deepened. “Giving us half a chance, I mean. What do you want from me, Eli? More of my time? More sex? A commitment? A promise?”

  “Zel, from you, I want it all.” I brushed her cheekbone with the back of my fingers. “But it doesn’t have to happen at once. I’m only asking for you to take one step.”

  “What step?” She was still wary, but she wasn’t shutting me down—that was a good sign.

  “How about . . . a date? A real, genuine, honest-to-God date. Not just two friends, not just getting together because it’s convenient before sex. A date for the purpose of enjoying each other’s company.”

  She smiled then, shaking her head a little, her silky hair sliding over my arm. “And here I thought we always did enjoy each other’s company, whether we called it a date or not.”

  I laughed softly. “Okay, you got me. But I think you know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She gazed into my eyes, and I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. “But what if it’s a date where we don’t go out?”

  I groaned. “A date by its very nature involves going out together. You’re giving me a complex, Zel. My self-confidence is taking a serious hit here. Is it that you don’t want to be seen with me?”

  “Fuck, no.” Her answer was swift and fierce. “That’s not it at all. And it’s not even that I don’t want to be seen out together. It’s that . . .” She ducked her head, and the tops of her cheeks went pink. “I’ve always had this kind of fantasy . . . and don’t laugh, please.”

  “I never would.” I brushed a kiss over her forehead. “Tell me.”

  “In the movies or on TV, I thought it was so romantic when the woman cooked for her boyfr—the guy she was dating.” She ventured a peek at me through her long eyelashes. “I thought I could make us a big, fancy dinner. Not just something I toss together, like we’ve done before, but something I plan. Something special. And that would be my perfect first date.”

  Just when I thought I had unlocked the key to her innermost being, she still managed to surprise the hell out of me. “That sounds amazing. I give our first date plan my seal of approval.” Scooting closer, I nuzzled her neck, breathing deep of her intoxicating scent. “In your vision of the perfect first date, what’s my role? What do I need to do? Should I bring something? Or do I just show up?”

  She shrugged, but I caught the gleam in her eye. “It won’t work if I tell you what to do. The whole point of the date is to spoil the other person. To offer up what that person might want, even if she can’t say it.” She cocked her eyebrow. “It’s a chance to prove how much you really know me, Eli Tucker. To see if you can live up to your boasting.”

  “Oh, honey, I can live up to it. I can blow it out of the fucking water.” I nodded, my mind whirling with ideas. “So I guess I have only one question, then.”

  “Really? What’s that?” She rubbed her hand along my face, absently tracing the line of my jaw.

  “Do you put out on the first date, or are you going to make me work for it?”

  “You—” Zelda pretended to be outraged, but I saw the grin she couldn’t quite hide as she tackled me, poking my ribs with one finger, torturing me where she knew I was ticklish, making me laugh until I grasped her arms and rolled her on top of me again.

  And after that, we didn’t talk much at all.

  I thought long and hard about how to make our first date special for Zelda. I couldn’t do anything that she’d see as traditional or boring, like bringing her flowers. But I wanted to make a grand gesture, something that would blow her mind and make her give serious consideration to the idea of us.

  I was wracking my brain for ideas as I sat at the kitchen table at my parents’ house, where I was living this summer. My mom and dad had come a long way in the past year. I had to give them credit. We’d had a couple of discussions about my future, about how their hovering made me feel helpless and frustrated, and to my surprise, they seemed to have heard me. They’d backed off, no longer checking on me daily via phone or text—and they’d even taken several long trips together over the past school year.

  Ironically, the more they recognized my independence, the more time I wanted to spend with them. I hadn’t had any reservations about living at home this summer; actually, I was a little nostalgic about it, as I figured it was probably the last time I’d live here. Once Nate and I had our apartment, I planned to stay there next summer, and then we’d be graduating and moving on.

  “What’re you up to, kiddo?” My mom breezed into the room, carrying a pile of books, her glassed perched on the edge of her nose. Her brown hair, the same shade as my own, was pulled up in a messy bun.

  I blew out a long breath. “I’m looking for a grand gesture.”

  Mom laughed. “I assume this ha
s something to do with a certain tall blonde woman.”

  “Always, Mom. Always.” Leaning forward, I picked up one of the books she’d dropped on the table. “What about you? What are you working on?”

  “Oh, God, research. All the time.” She sat down across from me, shaking her head. “I think I must have been high when I thought writing this book was a good idea.”

  “Surrrrre.” I drew out the word. “You know you love it.”

  Mom grinned at me. “The sad thing is, you’re right.”

  My mother had been nine months pregnant with me when she graduated from law school. She always joked that she’d held me in long enough to pick up her degree and then she’d gone straight to the hospital. It was exaggeration, but not much.

  She had stayed home with me until I started first grade, and then she’d begun her law career. Mom didn’t love trial law or anything that put her out in front of people; her passion was precedent and proceedings, interpreting the Constitution. When I’d been injured, she’d taken a leave of absence from the firm where she worked, and when it became clear that I was going to need hands-on care for that first year, she’d made the decision to quit and write a long-planned book on the Founding Fathers, the writing of the Constitution, and the way lawmakers interpreted it today. She was still working on it now.

  “You know, if you need any help, I’ve gotten pretty good at research and summary,” I offered. “My classes this summer aren’t that demanding. I’m happy to lend a hand.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.” Mom beamed at me. “Might take you up on that. But tell me about this grand gesture and why you need to make it. Did you mess up? Are you looking for something that says, please forgive me?” She arched one eyebrow behind her glasses.

  “No, but thank you so much for your confidence in me. Sheesh, Mom.” I mock glared at her. “No . . . see, Zelda and I have our first real date in two days. She’s going to make me dinner.”

  “That sounds promising.” Mom tilted her head. “You said she’s an amazing cook, right?”

  “Yeah, she is. And she loves to cook. So she’s doing that for me—making us a fancy dinner, because for her, that’s the ultimate first date. And I asked her what I could do or bring, but she said I have to think of it myself.” I let my head hang back between my shoulder blades. “And to be honest, Mom, I got nothing. I’m drawing a blank, and it’s stressing me out.”

  “Oh, honey.” My mother patted the back of my hand. “You’re making this too hard. You know Zelda. I can tell you do, just by the way you talk about her to your dad and me. What makes her tick? What makes her happy?”

  “I hope the answer to that question is me,” I retorted. “That’s the whole point. Isn’t it?”

  “Spoken just like a man.” Mom rolled her eyes. “Aside from you, son, what makes Zelda happy? Even better, what’s something that you two have shared that makes her happy?”

  A slow grin spread across my face. “Are you sure you want to hear about that, Mom?”

  “Oh, for the love of God, Eli. Elevate your thinking, please. I raised you better than that.” Apparently, I wasn’t too old to be scolded.

  “Okay.” I picked up my phone and began scrolling back over the long text conversations I’d had with Zelda since last fall. “Well, she loves school. She’s crazy-smart. And she likes football, too.” I had a sudden memory of a much younger Zelda, her eyes shining up at me, complimenting me on a play I’d made in one of my high school games. I wished for the one millionth time that I could go back in time and treat that beautiful girl the way she’d deserved.

  “Mmmmhmmmm. Keep going.” Mom rolled her hand. “Football is something you have in common, I guess, but unless you’re thinking of giving her season tickets to the Eagles, it’s going to be hard to make a grand gesture based on that.”

  I frowned, skimming our old messages until one caught my eye. “Hey . . . this might be something.” Lifting my eyes to my mom, I tapped one particular message until it filled the screen of my phone. “Zelda and I knew each other before this past year, but we really got to be friends when we were in Shakespeare together. We both took the class as an elective because we both love Shakespeare.”

  “There you go!” My mother shot me a brilliant smile. “That’s my boy. Now, how can you translate that into a grand gesture?”

  “What if . . .” I thought for a moment. “What if I found an early edition of A Midsummer’s Night Dream? That was the play we discussed the most. We each wrote an essay about it.”

  “I think you’re on the right track now.” Mom flipped open one of her books and pushed her glasses up higher on her nose. “My next suggestion is that you find something small and meaningful that only the two of you would understand and come up with a way to make that part of your gesture.” She sighed reminiscently. “You know, your dad didn’t have much money growing up, and he didn’t know a damn thing about wine or anything like that. But on our first official date, he brought me a bottle of what he thought was a high-class white.” She made a face. “It was actually a sparkling wine, not good at all, awful stuff. I hated it. But I loved your father, so I drank it. And because I did, he went on to bring it every time we had something to celebrate or marked a milestone.”

  “And you kept drinking it?” I chuckled. My mother was something of a wine connoisseur, and I couldn’t imagine that even back then, she would’ve been able to disguise her disdain of cheap champagne.

  “I did, because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Finally, I gently told him that it wasn’t as good as he thought. We went on a tour of a winery, and I introduced him to the truly good stuff. And your dad, being who he is, wasn’t at all insulted. He made it into a joke between the two of us. On the night he proposed to me, he couldn’t afford a real engagement diamond. But he gave me this lovely ring, and when I told him how much I loved it, he told me that he’d saved the wire wrap from all the bottles of that horrid sparkling wine, and he’d made the ring himself of that wire.” Mom sniffled a little. “Much later, he bought me another ring, but that first one will always be the one closest to my heart.” She tugged a thin gold chain from under her shirt. “I never take this off.”

  The small mass of twisted wire wasn’t much to look at, but seeing it reminded me of how much my parents loved each other. I swallowed over a sudden lump in my throat . . . and then I grinned.

  “Thanks, Mom.” Wheeling over to come alongside her chair, I leaned up and kissed her cheek. “That’s a beautiful story, and it gave me an idea.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Okay. Anything I can help you with?”

  “I might need a ride somewhere. Do you have time to be my chauffeur later today?”

  My mother hooked an arm around my neck and tousled my hair, like she’d done when I was seven years old. “For you son . . . anything. Anything at all.”

  I couldn’t remember ever being so nervous. I’d had my dad drop me off a full ten minutes before the time Zelda had instructed me to arrive at her apartment, and I’d sat down in the lobby, watching the clock and waiting to get into the elevator and go up to the third floor. I didn’t want to get there too soon or too late.

  I wanted everything tonight to be perfect.

  When I knocked on the door to her apartment, I felt like fifteen-year-old kid on his very first date. But when Zelda appeared in the doorway, I was fully aware of how grown-up I really was—because every nerve in my body went on high alert.

  “You’re . . . breathtaking.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, other than that. “God, Zel.”

  She’d dressed for tonight, and that put me on high alert all over again. She wasn’t pretending it was just another evening hanging out; by how she’d gotten ready, she was acknowledging tonight was different. And that small fact made me undeniably happy.

  Her dress was simple but pretty. Tiny straps held up the top, which dipped low between her breasts, giving me a tantalizing tease as she bent to kiss me once I’d wheeled inside the apartment. The dress hu
gged her body until it ended in some kind of swirly skirt deal about mid-way down her thighs, showing off those impossibly long legs.

  Holy shit, I was in trouble.

  “You look pretty damn good yourself, Eli.” Stepping back, she grinned down at me. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I’d bought new clothes for tonight: a pair of khakis and a shirt in a shade of blue that reminded me of Zelda’s eyes.

  “Something smells amazing, too.” I sniffed appreciatively. “Do you want to tell me what’s for dinner, or is it a surprise?”

  “A surprise,” she replied primly. “I like to do a reveal. It’s for me to know and you to find out.” She pointed to the living room, where a bottle of wine, two glasses and a platter awaited us. “But I did make us a cheese and antipasto platter as an appetizer. Shall we?”

  “Yeah.” I rolled over and waited until Zelda was sitting near me, perched on the edge of the sofa. “But first, speaking of surprises . . . I brought you something. Actually, two somethings.”

  “Gifts?” She cocked one eyebrow at me. “Why, Eli Tucker, who knew you had the romance in you?”

  I laughed. “I’ve always had the romance in me. You just never wanted to notice before now.”

  “You may be right. Okay, now gimme my somethings.” She wiggled her fingers. “It’s not widely known about me, but I love presents.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. Another piece to the Zelda puzzle. “Let’s start with this one.” I handed her the larger of the two gifts on my lap. Both were wrapped in simple brown paper with twine around them.

  “Ooooh, this feels promising.” Zelda flashed me a bright smile as she opened the first present carefully. I watched her slide one finger under the tape, releasing the paper, not tearing it. When she turned it over in her hands, I shifted my gaze to her face, anxiously waiting for her reaction.